As high-spirited Americans and the Boston Marathon crowds were blindsided by surreal pressure cooker bombs, and even as we reel from the senseless deaths and the plight of heroic runners-turned-victims, the key questions are: Why do these tragedies keep recurring and what, if anything, can we — the people and the U.S. government — do about it?

Let’s start with the strange thing: two young Chechens and the Boston Marathon. What’s the connection? It’s not immigration, whatever some in Congress are trying to say, and it’s not Islam. It’s being from an occupied country.